


Reflect

by orphan_account



Category: Persona 4
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-08
Updated: 2009-01-08
Packaged: 2019-06-14 12:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15388578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: He wishes he could bring out the shadow in her.





	Reflect

She performed on his own private Midnight Channel, the colours pulling across her skin shifting in a way that made him hot and dizzy. No longer the towering giant she had been, she was now small enough for him to fit inside without being sucked in whole.

 _“This is the real thing,”_ she whispered to him, not that he could see her mouth. He splayed his hand across the chrome honeycomb on her face – it was warm, like all of her. Alive. He knew better than to try and take it off. It was part of her face.

It might have been a classroom or it might have been the stage in a burlesque performance for all he noticed whatever hard counter he was pushing her against, the small of her back arching away from the ridge, her arms flung above her head and her torso a swaying horizontal pendulum.

 _“Now you know what's inside, underneath it all,”_ she moaned. And he did, before he woke up and forgot everything.

xxx

They didn't talk about it during the day, of course not. It was embarrassing, after all, most people found that sort of thing embarrassing. A big secret and all that, he'd learned about those. He had none himself, but he'd learned about them.

At school he smiled at all his friends, altering the length and breadth and manner of his smile for each new face. He gave Kou a manly slap on the shoulder and gave Naoki a quiet smile with an only very slight upward quirk of his lips before complimenting Ai on her new blouse. They didn't know it yet, but they would all love him.

This school had a new celebrity, and he loved hearing people talk about her. He saw the honeycomb before every single gushing fan and jealous girlfriend. They could summon her before she even came without even quite knowing what they were calling. He chatted with a student whose name he couldn't remember in the hallway and he felt like she was there, standing right behind him.

Rise, as could be expected, tried to hide this part of herself, even after she had brought it into a solid form. He wanted to get to know her, to peel away her layers from her first all the way down to her ninth and then her core but he _had_ to take his time, had to balance everything. He had to make sure to take care of everybody. They all needed him, relied on him.

He took her to the movies, once. She giggled. “It's almost like a date.” She flirted with him almost instinctively. Even if they weren't 'dating' now, they soon would be. He always knew where relationships would end.

In the dark of the movie theatre, the reflected glow of the film on her face brought him back to the honeycomb. He smiled in the dark out of habit and watched the play of lights and lines across her face.

“She's not the greatest actress ever,” Rise said, her hand in the popcorn. “But she's better than I ever was.”

There were many things he could say to that. If he wanted, he could twist her self-image back on itself and knot up any positive thing she had ever done for herself. He could make her just like the rainbow-skinned honeycomb-faced dancer and live his dreams every night in reality. But she'd never love him for real if he did that.

The question was, which did he need more: her love or a mirror?

He told her she acted better than she could ever know, and it was true.

xxx

So he got the love. He drank it and it filled him. Another person might be called needy, but he was giving so much and he had never been in denial.

Rise got what other girls dreamed of: the man of her dreams, who understood her, comforted her, supported her, made her a better person. Her first time was so much better than most girls could ever hope for, and he made it perfect.

She was fun, giggling and blushing and part play-acting and part the most vulnerable that he'd ever seen her. She took the top and he could see the swing of the pendulum again as she raised her arms behind her head. She was loud, shamelessly loud, and when he closed his eyes he could pretend that the thighs against his hips were streaked with rainbow.

“So I guess this is the real thing,” she said afterward, curled up against his side. He said nothing, kissed her forehead, drew her closer.

xxx

Teddie'd already analyzed that line to death – there was no real point in trying to dredge any more meaning from it. Rise still believed it, knew it, and he nodded in understanding when she told him this. She came so close to turning the game back on him, asking who he was. There was enough similarity between them that some part of her, the honeycomb part, the part that swung with abandon in a corner of her heart he restrained himself from ripping into the light of day, that she could almost see.

But at the end of the day, it was her need reflected that drove him, and his only need was his connection to her. She was no more and no less than every precious person in his life.

 _“There's no real me.”_ He looked inside himself, under his many faces, and found the truth in her words, as hollow as an empty bear suit.

 


End file.
